Simon Cowell’s partner Lauren Cowell worries that children in the UK use tablets too much at school. It comes after GPs, paediatricians and other specialists wrote to the government urgently requesting a reduction in screen use in schools. Becky Hunter-Kelm believes we should share these concerns and calls on Christians to respond with prayer, curiosity and advocacy.
Around 960,000 pupils in Britain use an individual screen in every lesson at school, and Lauren Cowell (Simon Cowell’s partner) says their son’s experience has made them concerned for everyone.
”I came away from a recent parents’ evening for my son Eric asking a question I hadn’t expected: When did handwriting become something children are supposed to practise at home? We’d been talking about schoolwork, and I asked how much writing children actually do with pen and paper. I was surprised to hear how much happens on an iPad with a stylus, and that extra handwriting practice should happen after school. At home? Surely getting comfortable with a pen and paper is part of what school is for.”
Where I live in Türkiye, our school uses Google Classroom to communicate with children and parents to set homework. For this reason, by year two, my son required his own iPad. I remember feeling quite shocked by this, wishing things were like they were when I was back at school where we recorded homework (and forged our parents’ signatures!) in a “contact book”.
Despite digital homework management, however, we still do all homework (except ICT) on paper/notebooks and with pens.
Tablets are, of course, an amazing educational resource when used properly. As a family living abroad, I don’t know where we would be without programmes like Reading Eggs, which helped my kids learn to read and write in English. But they need a purpose and stricter limits, because screen use in the classroom seems to have gone too far in the UK.
A wake-up call
This month, GPs, paediatricians and other specialists have spoken up in an open letter to Education Secretary Lucy Powell and Health Secretary Yvette Cooper, urgently requesting change to screen-time guidelines, because children are spending longer on screens than the recommended limit in 24 hours.
As a country, we need to wake up to this now, and start rolling back screen use in schools before the damage compounds further.
They are concerned that we don’t know the long-term health impacts of using tablets and laptops in school. They say both developmental and physical health could be at risk, and that clinicians are ”prescribing glasses, hearing aids and speech therapy to children for a problem that is unintentionally being made worse in our schools.”
They also pointed to studies showing short-sightedness in children and adolescents rose from around 24% in 1990 to almost 36% by 2023, based on an analysis of 276 studies covering 5.4 million participants worldwide.
”As a country, we need to wake up to this now, and start rolling back screen use in schools before the damage compounds further,” the letter says.
A ’disconcerting’ issue
As Christian parents and carers, we should feel concerned. For many of us, it’s already a struggle to keep healthy boundaries around screen use at home, so hearing that schools are allowing so much time is disconcerting.
My husband is a school principal, and he points out that education should balance analogue activities, sports, kinesthetic learning, etc. He absolutely agrees with Lauren Cowell’s comment – school should be all about pens and paper. He suggests a good plumb line for schools should be asking: ”What’s the purpose of the tech in this lesson? Tablets in the classroom have to have a purpose. Are the children conducting research? Are they learning coding? Even with research, students need more handbooks to mine data from, because they miss out on using their critical thinking skills when they Google a question. AI is doing the work for them!
In response to the public letter to the Department for Education, a spokesperson responded, saying that ”the government was developing new screen-time guidance for children aged five to 18, and will consult on the safety of artificial intelligence and educational technology in schools.”
Pray, question and speak up
Let us be praying about these new decisions. God made us mind, body and spirit. He intended for our children to develop cognition, critical thinking and data mining as they grow, and these skills are also key to growing in their faith and understanding of God.
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37)
Prayerfully use your voice to speak up about screen use in schools.
Let’s check in with our own children and ask them how much of their day they spend on a screen.
If you’re a teacher, headteacher, school governor or teaching assistant, prayerfully use your voice to speak up about screen use in schools.
As parents and carers, we can form groups, talk to our schools and share our concerns. Organising an open letter with your parents to your child’s school is another way to make your voice heard on this important issue and make a difference.
